Thursday Salute to Originals: All Ears
The standard notion of art, in its most classic sense, is viewing precisely placed images on white gallery walls. This art is entirely visual in its experience, in its categorization within museum sections, in its critique, and in the manner of archiving. We seldom consider how art could remove the sense of sight altogether in order to be experienced solely by another sense – hearing. What would a sound museum even look like?
Tim Murray-Browne has created an art installation that employs the element of interactivity, a common theme of the industry currently. However, instead of highlighting the often-touted relationship between light and space or movement and technology, this artist instead utilizes sound as his medium. His work begs the question: can sound have a point of view? In relating such an intangible concept, this video does it best:
Anamorphic Composition (No. 1) from Tim Murray-Browne on Vimeo
In Anamorphic Composition (No. 1), artwork is explored by simply moving your head to trigger a musical composition. A 3D camera tracks head and eye movements, signaling different parts of the music to play depending on your exact position in space. The installation is indeed interactive, but in this case we’re interacting with the invisible sounds floating in midair; a phenomenon that destroys boundaries.
“Anamorphosis” is utilizing a composition that is legible only when viewed from a specific intended vantage point (think: sidewalk chalk art that pops into focus when viewed only from a particular spot). Murray-Browne’s work employs the same technique, only with sound. Auditory moments are cut into shards, scattered within space, and only activated through human collision with their invisible forces.
Music (and art?) has been exploded from linear progression to an experience that is a three dimensional, spatial, “choose your own adventure” type of experience. Exploring space with only our auditory senses, there is no physical construct of an artwork in this installation. Can this concept redefine architecture and building? Can sound have a point of view?
Sources: Tim Murray-Browne, The Creators Project